


Counting the Days

by anistarrose



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Birthdays, Gen, warning for morbid thoughts about aging and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24739027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: Ford stops acknowledging his birthday during his time in the portal.
Relationships: Dipper Pines & Ford Pines & Mabel Pines & Stan Pines, Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 12
Kudos: 78





	Counting the Days

**Author's Note:**

> Been a while since I returned to my “angsty GF one-shot with a happy ending” roots, huh? And there’s no better day than June 15th to change that :)

Ford carefully counts the years he spends traveling between dimensions — he has to, he’s decided, in order to stay sane. He can’t lose sight of what he’s fighting for, or how long he’s been fighting for it. It’s his anchor to reality in an infinite, incomprehensible multiverse — he could be (and has been) lost in space, but he will never be lost in time. He could be marooned in the abyss at the bottom of an alien sea, but he’d still never lose sight of his goal or of everything he’s accomplished so far.

It’s been five, ten, fifteen years since the betrayal, since the postcard, since falling — and each year further reinforces his resolve. He’s survived this long, he _has_ to make it worth something.

But somewhere along the line, Ford stops acknowledging his birthday.

It’s not because of a grudge against Stan. He’s angry, he thinks he’ll always be angry, but he was angry with Stan throughout his early adulthood on Earth, and he still celebrated his birthday back then. He tried to separate the date of June 15th from his thoughts of Stan, failed more often than not, and blamed the sickening lonely feeling in his gut on eating too much cake, but he acknowledged it nonetheless — until now.

“Now” is somewhere around the time his hair stops being brown with a few streaks of gray, and starts looking more gray with a faint hint of brown, when he stops celebrating the passage of the years. It’s somewhere in his late forties when he looks in the mirror on the morning of his birthday, and a thought hits him like a neutrino blast to the chest — his age and his experience are working for him right now, but they’ll be working against him soon. 

His mission to defeat Bill is running against an invisible countdown timer, manifesting not in numbers, but in the aching of his joints and the slowing of his reflexes. At _best_ , he figures, he has about twenty-five years before the last few silent _ticks_ of that timer close in on him — and that’s only the most generous of estimates.

He thinks of the people he’s met across the multiverse, the people he’s promised to _save_ by assassinating their triangular, demonic dictator. He wonders what they’ll think if unbeknownst to them, he dies of old age (or reflexes that fail him, or a wit that’s not quite as sharp as it used to be, or an infection he would’ve easily fought off as a younger man — it’s all the same, in the end). He wonders what they’ll think after putting their faith in him for years, only for freedom to never come. If they’ll think he’s just given up. If they’ll feel betrayed. If they even realized the implications of Ford being a human, short-lived among the smartest species of the multiverse, or if they even knew how short human lifespans were in the first place.

He stops acknowledging his birthday, once he starts wondering those things.

***

Worlds away, but on the very same June 15th, a man weathers out a thunderstorm in the basement of his house, navigating the laboratory by candlelight and praying the power surge and subsequent blackout haven’t damaged the portal.

He thinks (hopes) that he’s in the clear, because he thankfully doesn’t see any blown circuits, but he can’t be sure. He’s _never_ been sure how the workings of the portal are supposed to look when operational — that’s what all his biggest problems boil down to, in the end.

Stan rests the candle on his desk — in the blackout, he hadn’t been able to find his usually-reliable gas lantern — and pulls out the journal. He winces as he sees his reflection in the golden hand — more shadow than face, thanks to the flickering candlelight, but Stan has spent enough time looking in mirrors to fill in the gaps.

He hopes Ford is aging better than he is, wherever Ford is. At this rate, they’ll both be decrepit by the time they see each other again…

_If we ever do._

Stan’s spent enough nights alone in the basement with his fears to know that this train of thoughts isn’t going anywhere good, but it’s already accelerated past his ability to halt.

Stan hasn’t seen a doctor in decades. There is a realistic chance that Ford, despite facing unimaginable peril in an alien dimension, will still outlive him. And if Stan _can’t_ reactivate the portal before his health fails him… then what will Ford think? 

Will he assume Stan had tried his best and failed, even the most basic principles of the portal’s operation flying completely over his head? Or will he just figure Stan had abandoned him, giving up at the first sign of difficulty, and in the process betraying his brother once again?

Stan looks at his watch, barely readable in the dim light, and realizes not just that it’s past midnight, but that it’s already been the 15th for several hours.

He trudges into the portal room, holding the candle at arms length and the journal close to his chest, then sits down on the cold earth floor, the muffled roar of thunder sounding off overhead.

“Happy birthday, Sixer,” he whispers, and blows out the candle. “I’m trying my best, I promise.”

He sits there in the darkness for a long time, until the storm outside calms and the lights finally flicker back on.

***

Stan and Ford are heading into the living room, carrying reels of film and other family memorabilia, when Mabel ambushes them with a confetti cannon in one hand and a can of silly string in the other.

“Happy birthday, you two!”

“Whoa, what?” Stan brushes silly string off the photo album he’s holding. “Our birthday’s in June. Who told you it was today?”

“If anything, you should be saving this confetti for _your_ own birthday festivities,” Ford adds.

“We know it was in June,” Dipper speaks up from the other side of the room, from which he’s carrying in a precariously balanced tray of cupcakes, “but Mabel and I were talking yesterday, and we realized you guys missed out on spending a whole bunch of birthdays together.”

“So we’re fixing that!” Mabel explains. “Today is the first of your many Bonus Birthdays, which you get to share because you’re actually in the same house and the same dimension and everything!”

“Any day from now on could turn out to be a Bonus Birthday,” Dipper adds with a grave nod. “Bonus Birthdays have a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect them.”

Ford slowly shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “And who gets to declare whether a given day is a Bonus Birthday or not?”

“That’s our job, of course!” Mabel answers. “We might not be able to bake you cupcakes once we’re back in California, but I’m sure we’ll still be chatting online, so we’ll keep you updated on when you need to drop everything and celebrate together!”

“Kids, I —” Stan’s voice fails him. “I can’t believe — you didn’t have to —”

Ford wipes his eyes. “It’s okay, Stan. They already know you’re a sentimental old man.”

“You’re one to talk, Sixer.” Stan sets down his photo album to hug Mabel, and Ford does the same to hug Dipper.

“This means… this means so much more than I even think I could explain,” Ford murmurs. “Thank you for doing this, kids.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've gotten mushy in the my end notes for birthday-related Gravity Falls fics before, so all I'm going to say is: this show still means so much to me, and I'm so glad there's still a fandom out there celebrating all our favorite characters' birthdays :')


End file.
